Re: Temperature and you

Brad wrote:
> 
> >If I understood correctly:
> >
> >You indicated that ships without thermal protection are visible at 1
LS and
> >hard to detect at 10 LS.
> >
> >You worked with 300K temp I believe.
> >
> >You indicated ships could disperse their heat (or maybe even store it
> >internally by some method instead?) and thus (because radiation is a
T^4
> >property), decrease their luminosity by 16 for every halving of
temperature.
> >
> 
> Yep,	I am working on the assumption that you are trying to detects
> using IR radiation emitted from the ship.  If the ship does something
> (turns on reaction drives, fires somethign) all of this goes out
> the window.

	Essentially, in FT if you fire up your drive, you've been
detected from
ANYWHERE in the solar system. Why do I say that? Well, we have as canon
(and rules) that the interference from the drive prevents you from
targetting ships in your aft arc. Therefore, there's got to be a fair
amount in the way of emmissions REGARDLESS of how the drive works (for a
reaction drive, anything that'll do that is pretty bright. If you have
decided to junk all the conservation laws and allow a reactionless drive
(why not allow magic while you're at it, but that's another subject
entirely), ANYTHING that'll screw up targetting is undoubtedly
detectable by passive means). Therefore, you can stay hidden (for
awhile) until you thrust, or get too close.

-Brian Quirt